Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

Every team competing in the 2026 World Baseball Classic has played exhibition games earlier this week and some official play already began as of this post with Australia and Korea already gaining official Pool C victories over Taipei and Czechia, respectively. I would love for some sort of rematch between Japan and the United States but I do hope Australia also advances. This week's post will give some room for the WBC participants to breathe a bit as it also allows me to focus on today being National Oreo Cookie Day which is significant because the last time March 6 fell on a Friday was in 2020. In retrospect, that  2003-04 Oneonta Tigers  cap would have definitely been a fine opportunity to highlight the holiday. The following week I posted a  1994-96 Oneonta Yankees  cap, and my corresponding Instagram missive just so happened to feature the hat alongside a "The Most Stuf" Oreo package that my sister had sent to me.  Looking back at that post, ...

Without a doubt, the biggest sports news of the week was the 2026 Winter Olympics gold medal wins by the United States women's national ice hockey team last Friday, followed by the men’s first gold since the "Miracle on Ice" team of 1980—exactly 46 years after that team's historic victory—this past Sunday. After watching those wins I instantly knew I wanted to celebrate each of them so this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is the  "Go USA!" variant of the  Ghost Army design by Efra Sanchez (aka @chamucosstudio  on Instagram) for The Clink Room. This is the third Ghost Army  cap I've featured here but the first time I've featured Clinker Efra's reimagining of the insignia that is now widely associated with the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops years after the story of these masters of wartime deception finally became known to the public. I missed out on the first Ghost Army release at The Clink Room but feel this "Go USA!" colorw...

It would be an understatement to say that I have been patiently waiting for Spring Training ever since the final out was recorded in the 2025 World Series on November 1, 2025, at Rogers Centre in Toronto. The sooner the Dodgers have a target on their backs, the better, and today marks the beginning of that chapter as the first Spring Training games are being played today! To celebrate the commencement of games today in Arizona and Florida, the cap logo on week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection honors the Cactus League by featuring the fear-inducing nature of the desert snake on a classic "Miami Nights" colorway, which highlights the vibrancy of the Grapefruit League in the Sunshine State. Teal was in the Arizona Diamondbacks original color scheme but that shade of pink is unique to Florida's aesthetic which makes this one capture the essence of both places perfectly.  The teal undervisor will help remind me of just how fresh this fresh fitted is!  ...and Clink Kong gett...

After posting on this blog for 15 years, opportunities to celebrate "firsts" are increasingly scarce, but while searching back through the archives to confirm this week's Frisco RoughRiders cap place as the third variant featured here for the team, I am proud to say that this particular one is my first-ever Marvel's Defenders of the Diamond design to be a Fresh Fitted Friday selection. The timing here is also fitting as we enter Presidents' Day Weekend, and of course I have to shout out the  2021 Fredericksburg Nationals "George" Alt Cap ,  which has the distinction of being my first-ever Presidents' Day post, and, just like presidential cycles, goes, was published four years ago around this time. While the minor league baseball club known as the Frisco RoughRiders employs a PascalCase script for their team name, their namesake was the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry regiment that went by the Sentence case styled "Rough Riders" and was...

My trip to the Valley of the Sun last week was filled with so many top-notch memories which were capped off by my wife taking me to a Phoenix Suns game that we enjoyed with some great friends who live out there. In short, I am just blown away by my wife's thoughtfulness on my birthday especially after having taken me to a New York Knicks game last year! While I relish the thought of attending a baseball game on my birthday, enjoying a quality hoops matchup in great seats is always welcomed and this year my wife upped the ante by gifting me a sweet Phoenix Suns hat I rocked to the game and am featuring for this week's Fresh Fitted Friday post! Would you believe this is the only the time I've written about an NBA hat on this blog? Well neither would I but I actually searched the archives and only found this Brooklyn Nets "City Edition" post so now I do believe it! Even though the Suns were founded in 1968, my brain is focused on those 1990s teams all the colorful ...

In last week's post I stated this week would be "somewhat related" to Spring Training with the inspiration being I am attending a f amily event in Phoenix this weekend although I hope you're not disappointed in it not being a proper Cactus League type cap because my intention from the outset was to feature this "reimagined" Phoenix Firebirds custom colorway from Hat Club! I decided a while ago the Phoenix Firebirds logo has a firm place among my favorites and this orange-drenched variant from Hat Club shoots that ranking way up high in the stratosphere for a San Francisco Giants fan like myself.  I should mention I've had this cap since 2018 which I know because not only do I have my order receipt for it, but looking back at the metadata of these photos I can see they were taken with the phone I owned at that time! As a San Francisco Giants fan, I love an orange and black MILB batterman and I want to express again how thankful I am for Hat Club releasin...